Drake’s latest release, Certified Lover Boy, is the biggest rap album of the year on the charts — but don’t expect to see it represented at the Grammys. Although the rapper was nominated for two awards for the album, Best Rap Album and Best Rap Performance for the single “Way 2 Sexy†with Future and Young Thug, he has since withdrawn both of his nominations. Variety reported that the Recording Academy confirmed the news, while the New York Times has since confirmed with Drake’s representatives, who had no additional comment on the move. Drake’s withdrawal comes as Grammy voting begins today, December 6. Per Variety, this timing means that the categories he withdrew from will move forward with four nominees, rather than adding a fifth.
Drake has a complicated history with the Grammys. In 2017, he declined to submit his “playlist†More Life for awards, despite it qualifying as an album. And in 2020, he wrote on his Instagram Story that the awards “may no longer matter to the artists that exist now and the ones that come after,†in response to the Weeknd’s widely criticized snubs, among others. Variety previously reported that Drake made the curious decision not to submit a song in Record of the Year or Song of the Year, but did submit Certified Lover Boy in Album of the Year, where he’d previously received nods for Views and Scorpion. And he clearly chose to submit his music in other categories too, given his two nominations, which raises questions about his change of heart.